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Recently Sold On eBay...Got 1st Case/Dispute/Refund Request

Topics relating to managing people and relationships

CarrieW

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lol yeah... I know people who do it also LOL...

I don't. I am the girl who purposely drives even slower to piss the tailgaters off more LOL.

I always usually drive over the speed limit so when they do it I seriously slow down... people are assholes...
 
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Trivium iz rC

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So I sold it. It sold for $20 and was worth $25.

I just got a message saying that the buyer wants a full refund and with it was an attached image of an error screen when he/she tried to use it.

Shouldn't I just refund the money and forget about if he or she is being honest?

Thats a tough one because the buyer sent the error message which could be real or fake. If I were you ask the customer for the gift card registration numbers and contact apple to see if you can get a written email from apple saying if the card still has a credit of $25 dollars or not.

Once you get the email save it and tell the customer on ebay that apple said it still has the credit on it and he/she have might of typed in the wrong numbers to make it work. Keep it for records just incase they try and dispute it again so you have proof to show ebay/paypal that it is a valid card.


While I can agree with some of the comments on ebay and there being tons of scammers and sellers getting the short end of the stick. There's a couple solutions to everyones problems that have worked well for me on ebay & amazon.

-Use Ebay & Amazon as extra revenue sources. Not " I have a Ebay Business or Amazon Business"
-Stop listing as auctions. Do fixed priced listings so buyers are forced to pay right away for the order to complete.
-Don't race to the bottom for lowest price. From my experience the people who only buy for lowest price are always a pain in the butt.
-Offer different shipping speeds (Free Ground Shipping, 2-Day, Overnight) Most ebay sellers just do standard shipping.
^Adding on to shipping, I don't understand why people just use USPS. Fedex & UPS can give you much better rates if you do some sort of volume and by Discounts I mean for all shipping speeds (Ground, 3 Day Select, 2nd Day Air, Overnight) the only stuff that I send through USPS is First class mail anything that weighs less than 13oz.

Don't be afraid to have a strict policy for returns. On eBay after I made a stricter return policy because of scammers buying stuff from me using it for what they needed and making some bs excuse to get there money back . 14 Days to return item, Buyer pays return shipping, 20% re-stocking fee if used, worn, or in not reselling condition. It scared away most of the scammers that were buying from me. I've blocked accounts because scammers make another account but ship to there same address lmao.

Use ebay and amazon for extra revenue. Don't use it as the majority of your business revenue.
 

Nadia

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I use eBay as a source of extra income but it would never be my main business. I've had 2 cases open up against me, I use it as a front end and allow Amazon to fulfill. I've learned to get over the tricky bits and learned if something doesn't go to plan, I simply refund them.

But yes, some people are just assholes.
 

jazb

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Its a great lesson for those trying to enter the fastlane. you want to sell to a higher class of people where you can. They have the money and don't bring the drama.
Duncan Bannatyne from Dragons den also said this. When he dropped his prices from £42 to £29 in his health clubs, guess what happened. A bunch of sidewalkers came in and caused nothing but drama. They complained constantly, tried to get refunds. ruined the equipment etc
 
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Daniel A

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Wow so much new activity in this old thread, but I'm glad it came up because this reminds of several things (I think this is going to be a long post, lol). Anyways for this iTunes card I refunded the money right after I posted I would, I just let it go. It wouldn't have been worth it to focus on that. I mean I completely forgot about it until now so it wasn't too big of an issue.

One thing this reminds me of is when I used to buy->fix->sell PS3s on eBay, I used to sometimes get bundles that came with game disks and/or there were disks still stuck inside the consoles.

Because I wanted to avoid further complications on eBay the game disks that had enough scratches on them for me to question if it would raise conflict if I were to sell it back on eBay, I took to Game Crazy/Hollywood Video so I could find out if they were willing to pay me something. Well they gave me store credit on a gift card for the disks that were resell-able. The funny thing is that this was a few months before Game Crazy/Hollywood Video. I wasn't paying attention to what was happening to their company, but I eventually got a letter in the mail basically telling me to get any store credit out because their company was about to go under. For some reason they were not able to give me the store credit in cash right away. I kept persisting in trying to get the money (a small amount) and I finally got it just before my local store closed down (Now I think the employees maybe just wanted to cash my credit for cash and take it themselves. I was like 17 y/o at the time, those f***s! lol). What I learned looking back is that I wasted too much time and energy on that little issue. I also started to really hate gift cards, lol.

Imagine if that situation applied to the USD and the entire country though...everyone would be left with nothing but 'monopoly money'.

At the time, I didn't consciously learn this other thing I was just reminded of.

If you want to read it (I actually recommend you do), I'll quote it right now. It will give you insight in human psychology and it ties in perfectly with this whole story.

The Justice Mechanism” And How It Acts As Your Success Prevention System


“The Justice Mechanism” And How It Acts As Your Success Prevention System
Justice mechanism is cognitive bias mixed with emotional over-estimation.

This is the system within us that doesn’t like it when things are unfair. We want justice and feel like we deserve it. We define justice as, “If I get half or more, then things are just,” not 50/50.

Social psychologists have uncovered this through experiments. One of the most revealing is where they have psychological subjects play a game that’s called the “Ultimatum Game.”

What they do is sit 2 people at a table that don’t know each other, one is A, one is B. Then they bring in $100. in cash and put it in front of A and they tell A, “You get to divide the $100. between you and B however you want. But there’s a catch. And the catch is that then B gets to make the decision about whether or not they get to keep the money that has been divided by A. Or, whether neither of them get to keep the money.”

So, here’s how this plays out.

In most cases what A will do is split the money 50/50 and B will look at this and approve it, so they both get the money. But in some cases, A being a smart human chimp thinks that B’s got nothing to lose so I’m gonna keep $60 for myself and give $40 to B. Or, I’m gonna keep $80 to myself and give B $20. Or, I’m gonna keep $100. for myself and give B nothing.

Something interesting happens around the 70/30 mark.

B will take 50/50, 60/40 and in a lot of cases will take 70/30, but around this point B starts saying no and neither of them get any money.

B would rather see A and themselves come away with nothing, than to see an “Un-Fair” travesty like someone else they don’t know getting a little more money than they do. This is funny because they don’t know each other and it’s free money. If B were by themselves and focused on the question of, “Do I want a free $30 bucks or not?” they would almost always say yes.

Well, the psychologists thought, well maybe since we’re doing this in America where $100 bucks isn’t that much money, our results are skewed. So then they went over to third world countries where $100 bucks represents 3 months income for a person and the exact same 70/30 push back happened. These people would walk away from what might be a months worth of income because they can’t stand to see that other S.O.B. get a better deal than them.

Are you ripping yourself off more than anyone else could?

Each of us are keeping a detailed mental record of all the transactions we’re having with other people, emotionally estimating them, seeing only validation and getting attached to the outcome which drives us to always try to get 50% or more.

Can you see how this screws things up?

We just walk around robbing ourselves constantly because we can’t stand to see someone else get a better deal than us. The restaurant owner in San Francisco knew how to take advantage of this.

In his restaurant they’d bring you a pitcher of wine and set down the glasses and tell the customers to drink as much as they want and just tell them at the end how many glasses they had. Of course, people would drink more than they reported and “ripping off the restaurant.” Then a journalist came along and told the owner, “Don’t you realize these people are ripping you off?”

The owner said, “Of course I do. But look outside. There’s a line around the block waiting to get in.”

Ah hah!!! This is what could be considered an enlightened connector, someone who understands this mechanism and uses it to turn the tables and give the other person the better than 50% deal because they know how this whole deal works.

Action Step: Don’t focus on what the other person is getting, focus on what you’re getting. If the other person happens to be getting a lot more than you, celebrate for them. Love them. Really enjoy when people succeed.

A habit we fall into is getting jealous and feeling like we lost something when another person succeeds or gets lucky or has a windfall. Someone wins and a little part of us dies inside. This happens to a lot of us.

There must be something evolutionarily valuable about it for it to be so universally common. The paradigm we live in is far different than our predecessors. It turns out that this “Justice Mechanism” is a huge blockade to the success of people.

If you’ll make a list of all the places this pops up for you and causes you to respond emotionally, and you systematically work on releasing this, and cultivate the ability to rejoice when others succeed, this will bring you to heaven on earth.

 

Daniel A

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I highly recommend at least one person reads/understands the quoted text above. It is perfect for this example.

You will learn something cool/useful too.



I recently re-read "How To Win Friends and Influence People" and it's basically letting you know that understanding/getting along with other people (social skills) is one of the most, if not the most valuable skill.

I was also listening to a podcast with Tai Lopez (entrepreneur) recently and he highly recommended to read a quality book on evolutionary psychology and I can definitely see the value in that.

PS: Another book he recommended was "Poor Charlie's Almanack", by Charlie Munger, who I quote in my signature now.
 

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